Adrift on an Inland Sea

Word has come to us indirectly that a family in the village has a loved one who had to be taken to Inverness for a crisis in the invisible universe of their mind. If you have never experienced this with a friend or family member yourself, then take a moment to be grateful. If you have, then your heart has already sent a sympathy card to them and wrapped a scarf around your shoulders to keep away the chill of the memory.

The crisis that means the secret pain has burst the familial walls often comes quickly, but that no longer secret pain has revealed itself in sly ways like an unusual wave on an otherwise calm surface or a rock that might be a seal off shore. We only ever have brief glimpses of our loved one's inland sea. If they choose to sail away from us on that sea, then we can only hope that the weather stays fair, their harbors are safe, and that they may some day come back to us.

"Just because someone is lost to you does not mean that they are lost." I run these words through my mind like worry beads through my fingers. They calm me but they cannot ease the grief of the memories of all those in my own life who have drifted out on their own inland seas. Some have come back. I am doubly grateful for their return, but for those still adrift I breathe another prayer of peacefulness and try to calm the white caps on my own inland sea.